Military Love » Harry Styles

chapter eighteen

The days in this camp flew by, once you got the hang of the waking up early, sprinting towards the shower and being on time for the morning and evening checks.

Even though we trained more than usual, it was easier than at the beginning. Probably because I've been at this camp for over 2 weeks now and my body starts to get used to all of this.

With loads of fresh reluctance, I clawed my hands in my cushion and tried to get my body out of the bunk bed without hurting myself. In the end, I managed. Within a few seconds, I stood on the ground with two shaking knees, caused by my lack of sleep.

I glanced around the room and by luck, most of them seemed to be asleep, which meant that there probably wasn't anybody near the showers. I hurried up to the remote door somewhere on the other side of the room, glancing back one more time if Agnes was gone again.

And indeed, her mattress was dented and her cushion was obviously used but her body was nowhere to be seen. I looked back to my own bunk bed, seeing that Melissa was still sleeping peacefully with her hair in a mess on her pillow.

The first time we'd lost her she magically appeared again a few hours later, when most of us were already asleep. She said she needed to clear her mind. I wonder what she was thinking about. 

But last night, when Agnes crept in trying to be silent but by accident slamming the door close, she received a lot of grunts from people who were trying to sleep. She snapped at them before returning to her bed. When I shook Agnes'- almost sleeping- body after she had laid down in bed, and everybody seemed back to sleep, she had turned to me angry about waking her.

"Where were you?" I had asked her before she returned me a sad smile and stare and mumbled how she was going through a lot at the moment. Her father had sent her a disappointed letter, of how he expected her to finish her Masters next year.

Last night, I, Agnes and Melissa all spent the whole period between dinner and lights out chatting out our previous lives. I told them how I used to work at a cinema, and how Geography was my favourite subject. Melissa inspired us with the wise words of the Brönte sisters, whilst Agnes told her about her father, and how he had pushed her to start law school a few years back. She absolutely hated every second of it.

I gently took my strides toward the black door and closed it as silently as possible, which was hardly possible since it creaked. To my prediction nobody was in the shower area yet, I quickly walked towards one of the cabins, hanging my clothes over the door.

I turned on the shower, feeling the steaming hot water rinse my body. A small squeal escaped my lips when it became way too hot and had to turn it back to a lower temperature. The heat burned in my skin like a permanent marker.

I mumbled a song which I had someone heard singing in the showers before, in the cabin next to me a few days ago. I massaged the shampoo in my hair and scrubbed my body clean and soft.

I reached out for a towel and dried myself before reaching my hand into the designated space where my clothes were supposed to be, I must've misplaced them. I looked at the ground, but they hadn't fallen down on the floor. I was glad for it because they would've been soaking wet by now if they had been laying on the moist floor of the shower cabins. 

I sighed, tightly pulling the towel so it was just covering my body. If I would bump into someone I would be coated enough to face them, though I wasn't very comfortable with walking out of a shower cabin with a revealed body. I slowly pushed the door open so that only my head could fit through it.

I peeked left and right to see if someone was nearby or could see me, luckily no one was in sight so I quickly carried the rest of my body out of the cabin before dropping my body to the ground, hoping that it would be somewhere. When I walked towards my bed, I searched through my whole bag, but the clothes were not there either.